I went to see Richard Herring preview his Menage A Un material tonight, with a select crowd of about two dozen. My major motive, of course, was to steal his material before it becomes common currency, although, for those of you who read his blog, some of it will be common currency already anyway.
One of the reasons that I went was because it was being held at a disused church on the Isle of Dogs. I haven't been to this south part of the Isle of Dogs for 15 years or so, and it might as well have been in a different country. Basically, it used to be a virtual wasteland, interspersed with many council flats and a few pre-war buildings that hadn't been flattened during the bombing of the docks. This was the last refuge of the "old" east end. Almost exclusively white, with people going back generation upon generation, mostly from working the docks. When these closed in the 1960s, the Isle of Dogs sank into a deep depression, both economically and metaphorically.
16 years ago they were just building Canary Wharf. The Telegraph had moved to Number 1 Canada Square, but the rest of it was a ghost town.
Now the whole area has been built over, with new houses and apartment blocks everywhere, none of them more than a decade old. And yet, it's still a ghost town. I walked for 20 minutes from Mudchute without seeing a shop, and I doubt that I was passed by more than half a dozen cars. For somewhere not a mile from Canary Wharf, where, it would appear, a lot of people live, there didn't seem to be an awful lot going on. It reminded me, obscurely, of a residential part of Nantes that I visited once. Lots of houses. No Shops. No pubs. No people.
( pics )
One of the reasons that I went was because it was being held at a disused church on the Isle of Dogs. I haven't been to this south part of the Isle of Dogs for 15 years or so, and it might as well have been in a different country. Basically, it used to be a virtual wasteland, interspersed with many council flats and a few pre-war buildings that hadn't been flattened during the bombing of the docks. This was the last refuge of the "old" east end. Almost exclusively white, with people going back generation upon generation, mostly from working the docks. When these closed in the 1960s, the Isle of Dogs sank into a deep depression, both economically and metaphorically.
16 years ago they were just building Canary Wharf. The Telegraph had moved to Number 1 Canada Square, but the rest of it was a ghost town.
Now the whole area has been built over, with new houses and apartment blocks everywhere, none of them more than a decade old. And yet, it's still a ghost town. I walked for 20 minutes from Mudchute without seeing a shop, and I doubt that I was passed by more than half a dozen cars. For somewhere not a mile from Canary Wharf, where, it would appear, a lot of people live, there didn't seem to be an awful lot going on. It reminded me, obscurely, of a residential part of Nantes that I visited once. Lots of houses. No Shops. No pubs. No people.
( pics )